Chapter 855: White and Gold

They came out of the light in rows.

That was the first thing Almond noticed. Every other kingdom had come through the Door in a crowd, stumbling and holding on to each other. These people walked out four across, in step, as if someone at the back was still calling the march.

They wore white and gold. Most of the gold was cloth now, because their armor had not come through the Door with them. But they still walked like soldiers.

Corvin stood at the foot of the Door with his arms crossed.

"Mind the step," he called. "Wipe your feet. Nobody’s going to wait for you to stop staring."

The rows kept coming. Almond tried to count them and gave up after a few hundred. Behind him, Ainen was already on his feet, looking at the pot.

"How many do you think?" Ainen asked.

"Too many for that pot," said Clovelle.

"Then I’ll need another pot."

The last rows came out at full dark. Then the light on the Door settled, bright and steady, and the march stopped. Fourteen thousand people stood in the frosted ring and looked around at a world with no ships in it.

They had all heard the voice on the road. Almond could tell by their faces. Some of them were staring at the air in front of them, reading. A few had sat down hard in the grass.

A tall man walked out from the front row.

He was older than Almond, with short gray hair and a long white coat. There was no crown on his head, but nobody needed one to know who he was. The soldiers around him moved when he moved.

He stopped in front of Corvin.

"Who holds this place?" he asked.

"Me," said Corvin.

"And you are?"

"Corvin. Frosthold." Corvin jerked his thumb at the ring of white stones. "This is my line. You’re standing in it. That’s why you’re alive."

The tall man looked at the stones, then back at Corvin.

"I am the Emperor of the Aurelian Empire," he said. "I would like to know where my people are, and what is outside those stones, and by what rule this place runs. In that order, if you can manage it."

Corvin’s eyebrows went up.

"I like him," he said to nobody. "He’s rude."

Almond had already gone still.

He knew that name. Everyone in Regalon knew it. Over a world called Theravex, a long time ago in the middle plane, the Aurelian Empire had come down through the storms with a fleet of warships. They had come to stop Regalon from taking a world they protected.

It had not gone well for them.

The Emperor’s eyes moved past Corvin to the fire. They stopped there.

John was sitting on his stone with his hands in his pockets. He lifted one hand out and waved.

"Evening," he said.

The soldiers around the Emperor moved in front of him all at once. They did it without a word, the way they had marched. Some of them reached for swords that were no longer at their belts.

"You," said a hard voice from the third row.

A man pushed his way forward. He was broad and scarred, with a white coat that had been torn at the shoulder long before tonight. He did not look at the Emperor. He looked only at John.

"You broke my fleet over Theravex," he said. "You caught my spear with two fingers. Then you knocked me through the hull of my own ship."

"I did," John agreed. "Archon Sevrand. You look well."

"I spent a year learning to walk again."

"But you did learn," said John.

Sevrand’s hands closed into fists. Nobody moved. Fourteen thousand people in white and gold had gone quiet, and every Frosthold and Duskspire face in the ring had turned to watch.

Almond stepped between them.

"There’s nothing in your hands," he said to Sevrand. "There’s nothing in his either. Everything we had up there is gone. Your fleet. His monsters. My decks."

Sevrand looked at him.

"And who are you?"

"Almond Emberthrone Requiem. Ananta Regalon."

There was a sound from the rows behind the Emperor. It was not loud. It was a few hundred people saying the same word under their breath.

Regalon.

The Emperor looked at Almond for a long time.

"Theravex," he said. "That was you as well."

"It was."

"You took a world under our protection. Your frontliner broke our fleet."

He looked at the fire, at John, and back again.

"And now I come out of a door at the bottom of everything, and the first people I meet are you." He looked up at the dark sky, then down at the frosted grass. "Tell me there is another way out of this place."

"There isn’t," Almond said. "But there’s food."

Ainen had walked up behind him with a ladle in his hand.

"It’s onion soup," Ainen said. "Clovelle made it. It’s better than mine."

The Emperor did not look at the ladle.

"The Aurelian Empire does not eat from its enemies’ pots," he said.

"I’m not your enemy," Ainen said. "I’m a cook."

"You were at Theravex."

Ainen thought about it.

"I was," he said. "I set a crystal king’s beard on fire. I’m sorry about that. It was a nice beard."

Corvin made a noise like a cough.

The Emperor turned back to him, as if Regalon had stopped being there.

"The rules," he said. "Tell me the rules."

Corvin told him. He did it badly and quickly, the way he did everything. The voice and the weights. The orbs, and how a part that did not fit would crumble in your hand.

The Enders, and how each one ended one thing. The lines, and how every line had once been someone’s home.

"And that seed in your coat," Corvin said. "Don’t look at me like that. You’ve all got one. Somebody always does. You plant it, and you get stones like these. Then nothing can walk in."

The Emperor’s hand had gone to his coat, over his heart.

"Where?" he asked. "Where do we plant it?"

"Anywhere you like," said Corvin. "But I’d plant it on the road. There’s a line every couple of days between here and Brightwater. Pick a gap and fill it. Then you’ll have neighbors."

"Regalon’s road."

"Everybody’s road."

"Built by Regalon," the Emperor said. "Run by Regalon. With Regalon first on every board."

He took his hand away from his coat.

"No. We have been under someone else’s rule for one evening, and that is enough. The Empire will plant its own home, in its own place, far from here."

Rudra had been standing by the fire the whole time. He spoke for the first time.

"Every kingdom that walked alone out here buried people," he said. "Frosthold lost forty-one in one night. Brightwater lost sixty thousand before we came. That’s not Regalon’s rule. That’s the grass."

The Emperor looked at him.

"Then we will bury fewer," he said. "We are not like the others."

He turned and walked back to his rows.

Ainen stood there with the ladle. After a moment he put it back in the pot.

"Well," he said. "I’ll leave it on."

He left it on all night.

Most of the Aurelians stayed in their rows. They sat in neat lines on the grass with their backs to the fire.

But it was a cold night, and the soup smelled of onions and black pepper, and fourteen thousand people had not eaten since the world above them ended.

A little girl came first. She was perhaps six, in a white coat too big for her. She walked straight across the grass and held up her hands.

Ainen filled a bowl and gave it to her. She ate it standing up, fast, and held the bowl out again.

"That’s the spirit," Ainen said, and filled it.

Her mother came to get her. She took one bowl too.

By midnight there was a line. It was a neat line, four across, and nobody in it spoke. But it reached all the way back to the rows.

When the Emperor walked past and saw it, he stopped and looked at it for a long time. Then he walked on and said nothing.

Ainen felt every one of them. Each new thread was small, and each one tied itself to the others in his chest.

Sevrand did not come to the fire.

Almond found him near dawn, standing alone at the edge of the white stones. He was looking out at the dark grass beyond the line.

"What’s out there?" Sevrand asked, without turning around.

"Enders," said Almond. "More than you can count."

"Can they be killed?"

"Yes. You kill them, and you take a part that fits you, and you make an orb out of it." Almond looked at the scarred man’s hands. "Hunt what fits. If it doesn’t fit, it crumbles. Don’t fight anything you don’t understand."

"And if we meet something we don’t understand?"

"Then you run back here," said Almond. "And Corvin will be rude to you, and you’ll live."

Sevrand turned his head at last. Almond could see that he wanted to hate him, and that he was too tired to do it properly.

"The Emperor won’t run," Sevrand said.

"What about you?"

Sevrand did not answer that.

The Aurelian Empire marched east at sunrise.

They went out between the frosted stones in rows of four, the Emperor at the front. Nobody had told them which way to go.

They had sent scouts out at first light, and the scouts had come back and pointed east, toward open land with a river in it and no lines anywhere.

Corvin watched them go with his arms crossed.

"East," he said. "Of course. Nobody’s ever been east."

"Is that bad?" asked Clovelle.

"I don’t know," said Corvin. "That’s what nobody means."

The Matriarch of Duskspire stood beside him in her black robes. She had watched the whole night without saying a word.

"We were like that," she said. "Not long ago."

"You were worse," Corvin told her.

"Yes." She did not seem to mind. "I hope they learn faster than we did."

Almond went to find Hessa.

She was sitting by the dead fire with her hand over her eyes. She had been there since the first row marched out. She did not look up when he crouched beside her.

"Brightwater," Almond said. "Is it all right?"

"It’s fine. Lily’s on the tower. Big D’s in the hall with his book." She was quiet a moment. "Lily’s asking where you are. She’s been asking every hour."

"Tell her today."

"I can’t tell her anything. I can only look." But Hessa smiled a little. "She’ll know."

Almond stood up. Clovelle was already holding out her hand. Ainen took her other hand, then Saffa and Fraisea, then Rudra and Marcus. John came over from his stone last of all and took Almond’s.

"Home," John said. "With a table."

"With a table," said Almond.

Hessa had not moved.

"Hessa," Almond said. "We’re going."

"Wait." She did not take her hand from her eyes. "Wait. I’m still watching the Aurelians."

"And?"

"They’re a few miles out. They’re marching well." Her voice changed. "There’s something in the grass ahead of them. It’s lying down. It’s been lying in that same place for days, I think. The grass has grown up around it."

Almond went cold.

"What is it?"

"I don’t know. I can’t see its shape. It’s too still." Hessa pressed her hand harder over her eyes. "But they’re walking straight toward it. And it’s lying the way a dog lies at a door."

She lowered her hand at last and looked up at him.

"Like it’s been waiting for someone to come out."